


Where There's Smoke

by ratherastory



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-23
Updated: 2010-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-20 07:56:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratherastory/pseuds/ratherastory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompted by the lovely and talented de_nugis at the Sam-focused h/c meme over at ohsam. Sam runs back into a burning motel room for no good reason, and ends up all sorts of messed up from smoke inhalation, which pisses Dean off to no end, until he accidentally discovers what Sam really went back for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where There's Smoke

**Author's Note:**

> Neurotic Author's Note #1: There can never be too much amulet fix-it fic! I have spoken.  
> Neurotic Author's Note #2: This is, like, the gazillionth fic in which I've given Sam asthma. I think I may have a problem, or possibly the makings of a 'verse. I'm not sure which, nor that they're mutually exclusive.  
> Neurotic Author's Note #3: Written in the wee hours of the morning today in between calls at work, again. No beta, no revision, nothing but spit, string and duct-tape holding this baby together!

If there's one smell that Dean Winchester can recognize fifty miles away, it's the smell of fire. It's one he's known intimately ever since he was four years old, and now that he's thirty-one ( _seventy-one_ ) he has experienced it in all its incarnations, from simple campfires all the way to blazing, family-killing infernos ( _hellfire_ ), and every single time it sparks an electric, adrenaline-fuelled reaction that heightens all his senses and sends him scrambling for the nearest exit.

The room is on fire.

There's no time to think, just enough time to register the flames engulfing the far wall, the smoke filling the room, billowing in great black clouds like a thousand demons swirling in the air. He all but falls out of his bed, hauls Sam out of the bed furthest from the door.

“Sam, come on!”

He drags his bewildered brother outside after him into the freezing night air, barely manages to snatch their wallets and the car keys from the table beside the door on his way out. He can see that Sam hasn't even figured out that something's wrong, he's just bleary-eyed and looks maybe a little pissed at being woken up, because he's been sick for a few days —nothing serious, just a cold, but it's been messing with his sleep, keeping him up for hours, coughing. Now he balks in the doorway, pulling back as Dean tries to pull him forward.

“Dean, what?”

“Motel's on fire!”

There's apparently no limit to the number of burning buildings he'll have to pull Sam out of in their lifetime. It's a hobby, it seems. He does it often enough and doesn't get paid for it, so that makes it a hobby, he thinks a little numbly, watching flames burst through the motel window. The ground is freezing under his feet. There's no alarm going off, no sirens, just silence and the crackling of flames as they consume the building. Sam stares, mouth agape, then grabs his arm.

“No one else knows. Come on, we gotta get everyone out!”

There are twenty rooms in the motel, and it never occurred to Dean that anyone apart from them was here, but it's the early hours of the morning and of course Sam is right, and so they split up and they start yelling and hammering on doors. Soon the motel parking lot is filled with frightened civilians in underwear and pajamas, and Dean is a little frantic trying to keep them all corralled and keeping an eye out for Sam at the same time —because Sam constantly fucking needs supervising these days, with Lucifer hot on their tails all the time, never mind the combined armies of heaven and hell. Fuck it, he tells himself. He got Sam out, now Sam can damn well supervise himself for five minutes, especially since their little stint in heaven made it clear he wants nothing to do with his brother anyway.

Someone has a cell phone, and conveniently uses it to call 911. He can hear fire trucks in the distance. They're going to have to hit the road before the authorities get involved. They're lucky they didn't bring much into the room with them, just their overnight bags, but that doesn't change the fact that they're both basically out here in nothing but boxers and t-shirts, and they're going to have to get new boots and new toiletries too, because life is just unfair that way if you're a Winchester. He pushes himself to his feet, realizes he hasn't seen Sam in far too long.

“Sam?” His voice carries across the parking lot, but there's no answering shout, and Sam is a fucking giant and he should be able to see him even in the small crowd of people. “Sammy?”

He turns on himself in a full circle, his heart climbing into his throat, and finally spots Sam coming back out of their room, packs in hand. Which can only mean that Sam fucking well went back into the burning building on purpose in some stupid fucking misguided attempt to get back a bunch of things that can be replaced at the Salvation Army. Dean covers the distance between them at a sprint, gets to Sam just as he drops to a seated position on the ground, coughing convulsively.

“What the fuck were you thinking, you moron?” he goes to his knees in front of his brother, grabs him by both shoulders and shakes him. “Running back into the burning building? Are you crazy? What the fuck, Sam?”

Sam just shakes his head, keeps coughing, pressing a hand to his sternum, and when he finally manages to draw a breath his voice is wrecked. “We should go... fire trucks.”

Dean backhands him.

The blow is hard enough to snap his head back on his neck. Sam reels, eyes widening in shock, a thin trickle of blood running over his lip, but he doesn't say anything.

“You stupid fuck,” Dean snarls, then yanks him to his feet and practically shoves him into the front seat of the Impala. “Don't even fucking talk to me. You want to die that badly? Fucking say yes to Lucifer, you selfish fuck.”

Sam doesn't say anything, but then he's coughing too hard to speak, so it's hard to say if he's obeying Dean or just can't find the breath to talk. Dean presses his lips together in a thin line, breaks every speed limit he can find just to put this latest experiment in sucking behind them. Sam keeps coughing, trying to muffle the sound in his sleeve, and it would serve the fucker right if he did have some sort of smoke inhalation or something. He's cradling his pack on his lap, holding it to him like it's the most precious goddamned thing in the world, only it reeks of smoke and everything in there is probably going to have to be thrown out anyway, pack included. Dean slams the heel of his palm against the steering wheel.

“Fuck!”

There's not much else to say, he thinks, and if he hears Sam wheeze a muted apology between bouts of coughing, he ignores it. Sam doesn't deserve to fucking apologize, let alone have Dean accept his apology. So he keeps driving, trying to shut out the increasingly desperate coughing next to him. Sam is wheezing, and the next time Dean casts a glance his way he sees him trying to look through his backpack, looking for something without any apparent success. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what the object of his search is.

“Sam? You okay?”

Sam nods, but he keeps coughing, curling over on himself, and Dean can see that he's no longer even really trying to sort through the pack, just has his eyes closed, rubbing at his chest with one hand. Shit. He pulls the car over to the side of the road.

“You need your inhaler?” He gets another nod, a little more desperate this time. “Okay, hang on.” He switches off the engine, gets out, goes around the car to open Sam's door, and takes the pack out of his lap, using the Maglite he keeps under the front seat to search for the inhaler. “Goddamn it, Sam. You're sick and you've already been sucking on that inhaler like it's going out of style for days, and you still think it's a good idea to go back inside a building filled with smoke?” his anger's already dissipating as he drops unwanted items on the ground by the car. “What were you thinking? There's nothing in here that can't be replaced. Here,” he produces the little blue cylinder, shoves it into Sam's stupid enormous hand and wraps his fingers around it. “Come on, deep breath. Deep as you can, and hold it.”

It takes two hits off the inhaler before Sam is even starting to draw in enough air, but Dean thinks that maybe they've dodged a bullet. They've got a nebulizer kit in the trunk that they've had ever since the incident with the mould spores, and if they can find a motel —preferably one which won't catch fire while they're asleep— he'll rig up a treatment. He pats Sam's knee, reminds himself to breathe as his own chest begins to ache in sympathy.

“You think you can make it a bit longer? We'll hole up next motel we find, get you set up with the nebulizer.”

Sam coughs some more, but he nods. “'M sorry.”

Dean sighs. “Yeah, well, you should be. All this shit smells like smoke, anyway. Going to have to trash it all,” he starts picking up the stuff he tossed on the ground, putting it back in the bag, and stops cold when his fingers brush over a small leather bag, held closed with a drawstring. All the anger he thought was gone bubbles back up in his chest. “What the fuck, Sam? You're keeping hex bags again? I thought we were done with this shit?”

“No,” Sam wheezes, lunges ineffectually for it, and starts coughing again when Dean holds the bag out of reach.

“No? What other possible fucking explanation is there?”

He wants to rip Sam's head from his shoulders, and settles instead for ripping the bag open, preparing to dump its contents on the ground and maybe grind them underfoot for good measure. Fuck Sam and his constant fucking lies. Except that when he rips open the bag, a single object falls out, and he catches a glimpse of bronze flashing in the glow of his flashlight before it lands on the ground with a soft clinking sound. Dean swallows, finds that his hand is shaking when he reaches down and picks up his pendant from the side of the road, wrapping the thong loosely around his thumb and forefinger. Sam looks as though he's been kicked repeatedly, still wheezing, but he's watching Dean intently, waiting. Expectant.

Dean stands up, tosses the pack into the back seat. “Okay, let's get the fuck out of here. Take another hit off your inhaler, would you, Darth Vader? I can't hear myself think.” He looks down at the pendant in his hand, juggles it a bit in his palm. “Fuck it,” he says softly, and hooks the thong over his head before sliding back into the driver's seat.

Beside him Sam is hunched over his inhaler, his breath still whistling in his lungs, but he relaxes in his seat a moment later, staring straight ahead at the road before them. Dean tightens his grip a bit on the steering wheel, the pendant heavy and comfortable against his breastbone, the familiar weight grounding him. Sam hasn't said anything, but the silence is deafening. Finally he clears his throat.

“Never could let anything go, could you?” he reaches up with his right hand, and cuffs Sam lightly on the head.

Sam huffs out a wheezing laugh, leans back against the headrest, and closes his eyes. Then, without missing a beat, he punches Dean hard in the leg as they drive off.


End file.
